April 16, 2007

Museums and Web 2.0

The term “Web 2.0” is thrown around a lot these days but it is difficult to pin down a single definition.There are some good attempts to describe it here and here (including thoughts from Tim O’Reilly, one of the term’s inventors).For our purposes I would boil it down to a shift, both in technology and use patterns, from thinking of the Web as a collection of pages passively accessed by users to thinking about it more in terms of building connections between active participants.

Some museums have begun experimenting with the tools of Web 2.0 – blogs, social tagging, social networks, and various forms of user-contributed content – and many others are contemplating doing so.On this page we have begun accumulating a list of interesting museum Web sites and other projects built around the concept of user participation.If you have favorite examples, or know of exciting new projects in the works, share with the group!We’ll add to our link list.

because user-generated content is so hot right now, people are tripping over themselves to transform everything on the web into a social network. it's important to recognize that the site must be useful and meaningful over time (not just once). that's why sites like flickr and myspace are so successful. they are a personal storage space, a sounding board, an invitation for new friends and a portal into a larger network of (hopefully, cool) people.

Welcome to Museums Remixed!

UPDATE: This blog is now a follow up to the Museums Remixed sessions parts 1 and 2 at the AAM 2007 annual conference. These sessions examined visitor-authored experiences and other forms of user participation in physical museums and online. This blog now serves as both a resource and a forum for those interested in continuing the dialogue regarding visitor-authored experiences. Whether or not you attended the sessions, please contribute your thoughts to our blog!